Monday, June 29, 2015

The Broads and the Clintons at the pre-ball dinner
hosted by Eli Broad at the Inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009. Click here to view more
pictures from the event.

For
some people, sleep seems incidental. If you’re one of them, I envy you. Bill
Clinton, who I have known since he was governor of Arkansas, sticks out in my
mind as someone who does exceptionally well with very little rest.

While
he was president, he invited me to stay at the White House. It had been a long
day and I was tired, so I went to bed a bit early. At 11:30 PM, I woke up to a
knock on the door. The president’s usher poked his head in and informed me the
president was in the solarium and wanted to chat. There wasn’t much I could say
except, “Sure.”

President
Clinton came in, sat down, and began talking about everything–the Russian
election, the Taiwan Strait, Israel, and why Kentucky was the best of the Final
Four in that spring’s college basketball playoffs. We ended up going to bed not
long before dawn.

Eli
Broad started accumulating his riches from a real estate company that he began
with his wife’s cousin on borrowed money in 1957. Riding the crest of the expanding
real estate market after World War II, particularly with the growth of suburbs
around urban areas, Broad began building his millions, later to be billions,
when he acquired Sun Life Insurance Company of America in 1971. In 1999, he
sold SunAmerica to the American International Group (AIG) for $18 billion. For
those who see accumulating wealth as the measure of a man, Broad became an icon
fulfilling the American Dream’s Horatio Alger myth of the
self-made man becoming incomprehensibly rich.

Fortunately
for Eli Broad, his myth could remain intact during the real estate and financial market
crashes in 2008 because his affiliation with his real estate business and
financial company was years in his past. He stepped down as CEO of Kaufman
& Broad in 1974 and CEO of SunAmerica in 2000. AIG was given $182 billion
in taxpayer funds in 2008 to prevent the company, and the financial system,
from collapsing during the financial market collapse brought on by the real
estate market collapse.

In
2000, Broad and his wife Edythe created the “philanthropy” The Broad
Foundations. The “philanthropy” became a means for the Broads to bring their
Horatio Alger myth to the arts and to
education, having no background in either, and, along with other major “philanthropists”
like the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation, he begin the reshaping of public
education in the United States to fit a neoliberal agenda in the
interests of the financial oligarchy the 1% is trying to form in the United
States.

Bill
Clinton’s all night White House meeting with Eli Broad, occurred
as Clinton, under the guise of a progressive agenda, was advancing a neoliberal agenda during and
after his presidency. Though he claims many of the reactionary laws during his
Presidency were due to Republican intransigence, the Democrats controlled
both legislative bodies during Clinton’s first term when most
of these reactionary laws were passed. He continued with the policies of the
Reagan years that were a counter-reform undermining the gains of Roosevelt’s
New Deal and the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60’s. Corporate and financial
interests had given these concessions because of fears that labor unrest in the
30’s and urban unrest in the 60’s would lead to a political movement that
threatened the interests of the 1%. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall
Act of 1932 benefited Clinton’s many White House guests and others in
the 1% and have led to historic levels of wealth for the 1% even as it has impoverished
the 99%. Clinton’s Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 led to an expansion of
Reagan’s “War on Drugs” which creation a prison population that is the largest
per capita in the world and an expansion of the death penalty for the
low-income population. His Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, known as “welfare
reform”, was to lead to an explosion of homelessness and low-income or
no-income families falling into a poverty not seen since the Great Depression.
The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up corporations to
low-wage workers in the developing world and gutted manufacturing in the United
States. It is under these conditions that Eli Broad launched his
“philanthropies”, including the Broad Superintendents Academy in 2000, to train
and insert superintendents in school districts all around the United States who
would advance a privatization of public schools agenda. Based on the right-wing economic theories
of economist Milton Friedman corporate education reform began afascistic agenda designed
to reshape public schools financially and ideologically for the one percent.

Playing
a central role in promoting Clinton’s neoliberal agenda was the Democratic
Leadership Council. Formed in 1985 after the defeat of Walter Mondale and the
reelection of Ronald Reagan, it became the think tank for many of the rightwing
neoliberal policies promoted by Clinton. Clinton was
head of the DLC in 1990 until he became President in 1992. A key player shepherding
the neoliberal agenda during the Clinton Presidency and after was Bruce Reed
who became head of the Democratic Leadership Council in 2001.

“Mr.
Reed was policy director when Mr. Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, was
chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. Mr. Reed also served as deputy
chairman of policy for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, then worked in the White
House for all of the Clinton administration.

As
head of the Domestic Policy Council, he had a leading role in overhauling
welfare in 1996 and in developing initiatives on education, crime, health,
tobacco and more. In 2006, back at the Democratic Leadership Council, Mr. Reed
and Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff but then a congressman and
Mr. Reed’s friend from their years in the Clinton administration, wrote a book
called “The Plan: Big Ideas for America.” It was intended as a platform for the
Democrats’ takeover of Congress that year.”

Files in the National Archives show that Reed was heavily involved in developing the
Clinton neoliberal education agenda. Files from 1997 – 2000 in 133 folders in 9
boxes “includes material pertaining to national standards and
testing; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the 1999 efforts
to reauthorize the act; 100,000 teachers and class size; charter schools and
vouchers; education events and forums; social promotion; Goals 2000; Helping
Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) Scholarships; Pell Grants; the
Education Flexibility Partnership Act of 1999 (Ed-flex); education funding and
budgets; and various school and teacher issues.”

In the final months of
the Clinton administration, another controversy erupted over favoritism for wealthy supporters of the Clinton’s
neoliberal agenda. Hillary Clinton played an active role in efforts to give tax
breaks to private foundations and wealthy charity donors at the same time as
donations were being solicited for Bill Clinton’s presidential library. Bruce
Reed, who was Clinton’s chief domestic policy advisor at the time, dismissed
the controversy saying, Clinton "wanted to give a break to
working people for putting a few more dollars in the plate at the church. Not
for any other far-fetched reason." Months before proposing the tax breaks,
Clinton White House officials had proposed holding a September, 1999 conference
to celebrate “philanthropy heroes” who had donated large gifts. The list
included
“Microsoft's Bill Gates and his wife, Dell computer founder Michael Dell and
investors George Soros and Eli Broad”.

In July of 2005 Hillary
Clinton was appointed by the Democratic Leadership Council to define the
party’s agenda for the upcoming 2006 and 2008 elections. Reed assured an interviewer on NPR that she was on board with the neoliberal agenda but her appointment
had nothing to do with a political run for President in 2008.

“The election
of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of
Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. secretary of education, marked the pinnacle
of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have
finally aligned.

With an agenda that echoes
our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers,
accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama
administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and
other reformers have planted.”

After announcing her run for
President on April 12, 2015, Hillary Clinton met with the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association in June. She sought to distance herself
from her support of No Child Left Behind when she was a Senator in 2001. While
she was an early critic of standardized testing, her position seems to shift by
which way the political winds are blowing. Given her history with the Broad
Foundation, can there be any illusions that she will continue the neoliberal
attack on public education? It has been reported that 181 Clinton Foundation donors lobbied the State Department when she was
Secretary of State. The two top donors were leaders in corporate education
reform: The Microsoft/Gates Foundation ($26,000,000) and the Walmart/Walton
Family Foundation ($10,500,00).

“Teacher unions have always been a
formidable voice in public education. We decided at the onset of our work to
invest in smart, progressive labor leaders like Randi Weingarten, head of the
United Federation of Teachers in New York City for more than a decade and now
president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). We partnered with
Weingarten to fund two union-run charter schools in Brooklyn and to fund New
York City’s first incentive-based compensation program for schools, as well as
the AFT’s Innovation Fund. We had previously helped advance pay for performance
programs in Denver and Houston, but we were particularly encouraged to see New
York City embrace the plan.”

Unless the 99% gets its act
together and launches a serious political challenge to the two-party system
with a party with a program that represents the interests of the 99%, the November
2016 election will once again be a choice between the lesser of two evils. The
problem is the evil just keeps getting worse.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

How many of us get the big picture about what is happening to American Education?

How many of us have seen the grand scheme? Scholars have followed the attempts to privatize education, one of the biggest industries in America, for 100 years. John Bellamy Foster wrote a paper in Monthly Review (referenced below) about that. But up until now these attempts were not successful.

What is different now is that this movement has become successful and it will take everything we have to hold it off. We must fight with every ounce of strength and try to capitalize on our numbers, not just in voicing our concerns on social media but also by financially supporting efforts to fight their media machine by supporting pro public education documentaries so they can be screened at well known film festivals.

As we know, commercial concerns look constantly for new markets and areas of activity. In the last quarter of the twentieth century there was strong pressure to ‘roll-back’ state regulation, and to transform non-market and ‘social’ spheres such as education into arenas of commercial activity.

According to Colin Leys, such a transformation – the making of a market – entailed the meeting of four requirements:

1. The reconfiguration of the goods and services in question so that they can be priced and sold.

2. The inducing of people to want to buy them.

3. The transformation of the workforce from one working for collective aims with a service ethic to one working to produce profits for owners of capital and subject to market discipline.

4. The underwriting of the risks to capital by the state.

What we have here is a process of commodification – and the development of attempts to standardize ‘products’ and to find economies of scale.

In the 1980s, a powerful conservative political coalition, led by corporate interests, was organized against the public schools. Ronald Reagan sought to institute school vouchers, while frequently indicating his desire to abolish the U.S. Department of Education—established as a cabinet-level department during the Carter administration. Reagan appointed a National Commission on Education, which issued its report, A Nation at Risk, in 1983. Its message was that the U.S. education system was failing due to its own internal contradictions. (No mention was made of slowing economic growth, increasing inequality, growing poverty, etc.) In the words of A Nation at Risk: “If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves….We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

The Reagan administration, which initiated a huge Cold War military buildup while cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, used the rhetoric of reducing the skyrocketing federal deficit to justify jettisoning federal support for schools—including a 50 percent cut in federal Title I funding for schools in low-income districts.28 The late 1980s and 1990s saw the first dramatic shifts toward more rigid standards, accountability, and assessment systems, backed up by coercive mechanisms, in states like Kentucky and Texas (the latter under Governor George W. Bush). This general approach to educational reform was pushed forward within the federal government in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, and materialized as a major bipartisan national program for the transformation of elementary and secondary schooling in the presidency of George W. Bush.

If you thought corporate takeovers of public schools was just for poor districts, this is a must read. A clip:

. . . in the summer of 2012, as Cami Anderson was hollowing out Newark, Montclair hired a new superintendent. Penny MacCormack was new to the state, had never been a superintendent, and wasn’t known to many in Montclair. But those who track state education politics knew she had been a district official in Connecticut who was recruited by Cerf to be an assistant commissioner in Christie’s DOE. The department had received several grants from the Eli Broad Foundation and was staffed with multiple Broad “fellows.” MacCormack, Cerf, and Anderson all have Broad ties.

MacCormack was at the N.J. Department of Education for less than a year when she suddenly resurfaced as the new Montclair superintendent without any public vetting, a clear sign the board knew this was a controversial hire.

Her welcome reception began with a video about the origins of the magnet system in the struggle to integrate the town’s schools. Some honored town elders who had played key roles were in the audience. MacCormack awkwardly attempted to connect her vision to the compelling town history framed in the video. Despite the town’s commitment to equity, she said, wide “achievement gaps” remained, and addressing those gaps would be her No. 1 priority.

MacCormack didn’t pledge to restore the equity supports that had been eroded in recent years or challenge Christie’s budget cuts. Instead, she announced that the Common Core standards and tests, and the state’s new teacher evaluation mandates, would “level the playing field” and “raise expectations for all.” “And,” she said, “I will be using the data to hold educators accountable and make sure we get results.”

After she finished, a latecomer took the floor and told the audience how lucky Montclair was to have MacCormack come to town. It was Jon Schnur, the architect of the Race to the Top. He also lives in Montclair. We later learned that Schnur was MacCormack’s “mentor” in a certification program she enrolled in after being hired without the required credentials to be superintendent.

In Montclair, there was no formal state takeover and no contested school board elections. Instead, the long reach of corporate education reform had used influence peddling, backdoor connections, and a compliant appointed school board to install one of their own at the head of one of the state’s model districts. . . .

The demonizing of teachers is another public relations feint, a way for corporations to deflect attention from the theft of some $17 billion in wages, savings and earnings among American workers and a landscape where one in six workers is without employment. The speculators on Wall Street looted the U.S. Treasury. They stymied any kind of regulation. They have avoided criminal charges. They are stripping basic social services. And now they are demanding to run our schools and universities.

In a bold move that has the potential for booting teachers unions from schools, stripping local voters of their authority over their school districts and turning operations over to for-profit companies, the Ohio legislature introduced and passed legislation in a matter of hours with no opportunity for the public to deliver opposition testimony.

The bill began innocuously in the House as an effort to help communities turn schools into comprehensive learning centers for the neighborhood. The bill passed from the House to the Senate a month ago with an overwhelming 92-6 vote.

Almost everyone liked it — until Wednesday.

The Ohio Federation of Teachers, one of the state’s unions representing teachers, was prepared to testify in favor of the bill as it headed for a committee vote.

But Melissa Cropper, president of the union, got wind of the amendment that could disenfranchise unions and voters and turn operations over to private interests.

When it came time for her to speak, she attempted to oppose the new provision, but was told that the amendment had not yet been offered, so she could not address it.

She sat down. The amendment was introduced and four men in line behind her who had traveled from Youngstown stepped up to give favorable testimony.

They were Youngstown State University president Jim Tressel; Youngstown Diocese Bishop George Murry — whose organization of parochial schools would become eligible to receive state payment for children attending his schools; local chamber of commerce President Thomas Humphries; and Connie Hathorn, a former Akron school administrator who — as superintendent of Youngstown City Schools — has failed to turn around the struggling school system and will quit to take a job in Arkansas at the end of the month.

The bill quickly passed out of committee, went to the Senate floor where it passed with no support from Democrats and some opposition from Republicans — 18-14 — moved late at night to the House for concurrence, and again passed with opposition from both sides and a vote of 55-40, far different from its initial support.

Within 12 hours of introduction, it went to Gov. John Kasich for his consideration.

His office was supportive.

“Children in chronically failing schools don’t deserve to be abandoned, they need our help, badly,” said Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols. “These long overdue reforms to Ohio’s support system for failing schools will bring hope to these kids, parents and educators. And the governor applauds the local and state leaders who had the courage to stand up and help lead these needed changes.”

Youngstown first targetThe discussion centered on Youngstown, which has been guided by an academic distress commission since 2010. The change has the potential to accelerate school choice, sending more children and public dollars to charter and private schools.

Lorain, the other Ohio school district in academic distress, must perform poorly another two years before it falls under the new provision, Ohio Department of Education spokesman John Charlton said.Because the bill passed so quickly and state reports cards won’t include all the required information until next year, it is not clear how many other districts could be affected.

Last-minute maneuverSen. Peggy Lehner, a Kettering Republican and chair of the Senate Education Committee, was the one who attached the plan to the otherwise popular House Bill 70 Wednesday morning.

Teachers are decrying the bill’s privatization of the public education system.

Democrats voiced disapproval on the Senate floor, saying the change does little to address the root cause of social, economic and educational issues in the struggling Mahoning Valley town.

Youngstown has the highest poverty rate among Ohio’s 10 major cities and it is eighth in the nation for poverty among more than 550 ranked cities.

“It appears that it’s blaming the teachers, that it’s blaming the administrators in Youngstown, when we all know that the challenges in Ohio’s urban cores go beyond what a teacher or administrator can do,” said Sen. Cecil Thomas, D-Cincinnati.

“Haste makes waste and mistakes,” said Sen. Charletta Tavares of Columbus. She said this was a last-minute insertion in a bill designed to expand a Cincinnati-area program where community, health, private and public agencies offer wraparound services in schools to address the adverse impact of poverty.

“We are changing the state policy on education that applies to every school district in the state, not just Youngstown,” Sen. Michael Skindell of Lakewood said of the potential for the program to spread. “It seems to incentivize students to go from a failing public school to a failing charter school.”

He added: “Gosh, I wish we would be moving as fast on the failing charter schools in this state.”The Ohio Department of Education, in conjunction with the governor’s office, has been working on this plan for months.

“I know that ODE has participated in discussions and in the drafting of the legislation,” said spokesman John Charlton, who noted the program is “somewhat unprecedented.”

Academic Distress Commissions have been in place since 2007, Charlton explained, but have not made significant progress in Youngstown.

“Bottom line,” Charlton said, “is that it is not fair to the students and parents who trust their schools to provide for their educations, the local educators and community leaders who have played by the system’s rules, or the communities whose futures depend on educated, skilled citizens. It’s time for a change. Kids in academically struggling schools can’t wait any longer; we need to make immediate improvements to the support system.”

Schools that receive three consecutive ‘Fs’ on state report cards will be taken over by the revamped academic distress commission, which consists of three members appointed by the state superintendent, another by the local mayor and a teacher selected by the local school board president.

The commission then hires a CEO, who doesn’t have to be an educator but must have “high-level management experience.” The CEO is paid up to $150,000 directly by the Ohio Department of Education.

The academic distress commission also can hire an “independent entity” — possibly a for-profit company — to oversee and promote local charter schools. The state’s private school voucher program also opens up to any student who would otherwise attend the academically distressed school district, regardless of how well the nearest school building in that system performs.

Schools can get out of academic distress if they earn a C grade on the report card and no more Fs in the next two years. Though overall grades aren’t out yet, 59 percent of all grades given last year to Ohio’s eight largest and poorest urban school districts were Fs.

When tested, students who live and attend public school in Youngstown rank low. One in seven students, however, attend school in neighboring suburbs through open enrollment, a process that skews the district’s performance.

Studies by the Mahoning County Educational Service Center and the Beacon Journal show that students who left Akron or Youngstown tended to be higher performing students. Students who lack personal transportation to attend a neighboring district generally are those who score lower and depress the district’s overall grade.

Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @DougLivingstonABJ.

The anti-reformy groups and self-promoting individuals that crouch under the Ravitch umbrella, along with the bloggers who are kept in line by NPE's censorious Anthony Cody and Jon Pelto, go about their business pretending that the corporate unions are allies of corporate education resistance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, Ravitch's latest gloss on the NEA and AFT embrace of corporate charter schools provides a perfect example of how dangerous Ravitch is to those are not amused or appeased by the her corporate ass kissing.

Here she pretends that 1) NEA/AFT love for corporate charter chain gangs is something new, and 2) there is some positive aspect to this anti-public school position. Unadulterated crap:

The NEA and AFT are actively trying to organize charter teachers. This is challenging because of high teacher turnover and often hostile charter management. As the numbers show, they have had limited success, but Cohen says that the unions have softened their opposition to charters in hopes of establishing unions in more charters.

Indeed, the AFT and NEA chiefs have never given a damn about the ideologies of the charter privatizers, just as long as their oppressed and oppressive teachers are allowed to cough up hundreds of dollars each year to continue to build the corporate union empire of traitorous lawyers and pretend teachers.

As the NEA and AFT are presently constituted, they serve as the greatest asset of the billionaires who want to destroy the profession of teaching and turn public schools into corporate welfare "broken windows" training camps for the poor.

Of course, Ravitch's umbrella NPE could not operate with AFT and NEA cash. A perfect symbiosis of self-serving egoists and corrupt collaborators.

by Doug Martin at Hoosier School Heist TV(This article was first posted on Doug Martin's new blog)When word broke recently that Indiana Republican state representative Bill Fine’s daughter--a Mitch Daniels-pick and Mike Pence-reinstated state board of ed. member--may become the new co-chair of the state board to share powers with supt. of public instruction Glenda Ritz, many were outraged. Bill Fine had, in fact, "backed the bill to create the position of vice chairwoman" to the state board of education, and his daughter seldom agrees with Ritz.As I expose in my book Hoosier School Heist, the whole so-called school reform movement in Indiana (and elsewhere) is a billionaire's playground to buy legislators to privatize public schools. And crony capitalism and conflicts of interest are the rule and NOT the exception.And Bill Fine has money from those involved in the takeover of Indiana public education.In October 2012, Fine received $5,000 from the Hoosiers for Economic Growth PAC detailed in Hoosier School Heist(see page 5 in this PDF). For years, this PAC has been backed by Walmart, Amway, hedge fund managers, and several wealthy Indiana businesspeople, among others in and out of Indiana.Since the PAC changed its name to Hoosiers for Quality Education recently, it has given over $400,000 to Indiana Republican candidates and committees since 2014. One of these is the Indiana House Republican Campaign Committee, Fine’s chief funder.AN INTERESTING TIMELINE:Out of the $275,000 the Walmart-Amway front-group American Federation for Children handed the Hoosiers for Quality Education PAC in 2014, $50,000 came on October 10 and $100,000 in September (see page 4).On October 22, 2014, the Hoosiers for Quality Education PAC gave the Indiana House Republican Campaign Committee $25,000 and another $25,000 on October 24, 2014.The Indiana House Republican Campaign Committee handed Fine $7,100 on October 24, 2014 and $13,500 on October 17, 2014.Yes, it is obvious, Bill Fine is doing his best to do what the extremely wealthy want so that he can open up that campaign chest and sing. BIODoug Martin is the author of Hoosier School Heist: How Corporations and Theocrats Stole Democracy From Public Education, a book being read in over 130 cities and towns and 78 Indiana counties, 23 states, and the District of Columbia. A regular guest on national and Indiana radio talk shows such as Justin Oakley’s Just Let Me Teachand Amos Brown’s Afternoons with Amos, Dr. Martin’s research has been or will soon be featured in the Washington Post Answer Sheet, ABC’s Nightline, and the Associated Press.

A national expert on the corporate and theocratic assault against public education, Doug Martin is the author of Hoosier School Heist, the book which exposes the corruption, scandals, and campaign financing behind so-called school reform in Indiana and elsewhere. OrderHoosier School Heist and get the facts.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Pearson, a company responsible for much of common core testing, employs graders at low wages who are unqualified to evaluate the exams ("Grading the Common Core: No Teaching Experience Required," June 23).

I predict that Pearson and other testing companies will confess the error of their ways and invest millions in hiring better qualified graders, training them more thoroughly, and paying them more.

They will also cheerfully increase the cost of the tests, adding more to the already staggering amount taxpayers pay to support the common core testing program and adding more to corporate profits.

Stephen Krashen

Original article:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/us/grading-the-common-core-no-teaching-experience-required.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150622&nlid=5100421&tntemail0=y